


the lingering ghosts

by saunatonttu



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blue Lions Spoilers, Childhood Memories, Gen, Post-Timeskip, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 10:50:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20152411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunatonttu/pseuds/saunatonttu
Summary: After a while, Felix realized he had seen that look on Dimitri's face before.Early post-timeskip spoilers.





	the lingering ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> [rodrigue voice] how do you do, fellow kids

The first thing Dimitri had done upon seeing Felix’s face again was to let out a scream so loud quite a few servants in the royal family’s private palace had dropped their plates.

Even to this day, Felix could recall the absolute horror that had shown on the 13-year-old crown prince’s face, as though Felix was a ghost come alive. It had stung, to see his friend react to seeing his face like that, but the old man had dragged him away and told him not to mind it.

“You resemble your brother,” Rodrigue had said quietly, distantly, and not looking at Felix directly in the face either. “His Highness must have been spooked.”

_Spooked_ was putting it lightly. For the rest of the day, Dimitri didn’t so much as peek out from his room – Felix would know, he’d kept watch over the door as he waited for Dimitri like a kicked puppy. Sometimes, Felix heard distinct sobbing. Sometimes screaming. But more often he heard nothing, as though Dimitri wasn’t even in there.

Even during those times, when he had just lost his brother and the country its king, that day had been without a doubt the worst in Felix’s life.

He never forgot the way Dimitri had looked at him that day, face pale and blue eyes wide but lifeless and framed by unwashed hair, and he perhaps never would, no matter how much he longed to.

*

_Your brother died a noble death._ So many things wrong with just one statement, the twisted ideals that birthed such words were hardly the only ones. The words made him angry: what was so noble about death that it made Glenn’s acceptable to their father?

Was he supposed to feel _proud_ his brother’s life had been taken by whatever radicals had thought it suitable to hack off the King’s head along with everyone else’s?

At the very least, Dimitri shared Felix’s anger and sorrow.

“I’d rather he had lived,” Dimitri muttered to him, hugging his knees and staring blankly at the empty training grounds before them. Glenn had trained them there, once upon a time. Felix stared at Dimitri instead, at the forlorn emptiness even only his side profile conveyed. Dimitri’s breaths shook, but not from any physical exertion.

“Yeah,” Felix said, and the anger that had been burning inside him like a forest fire died. Just a little. It was difficult to stay mad for himself when Dimitri beside him looked like the canvas for all the world’s suffering. “Me too.”

They stayed silent for a while, but one look at Dimitri told that the other was trying to gather the courage to say something. Felix waited, but the longer the silence reigned, the more fidgety he became.

“Do you suppose,” Dimitri finally started with a voice so weak Felix’s heart threatened to break at the sound of it, “he would have survived if I had died?”

The anger flared up immediately, burning its way through Felix as though someone had lit oil on fire. Before he realized what he was doing, he had grabbed Dimitri by the collar of his shirt and shoved him down on the ground.

“Don’t,” Felix hissed at the boy below him, “_ever_ say that to me again, Dimitri.”

That was the only time Felix remembered ever making Dimitri cry with something he had said. And, by the Goddess, Felix had _tried_ at some point.

*

The rebellion came and went. Dimitri showed his true capability as a monster wearing a human’s skin.

Though, Felix supposed, that _thing_ he had witnessed at the rebellion couldn’t have been the boy he remembered. The boy that gave away daggers at a surprisingly earnest attempt at encouraging someone. The boy that had crawled into Felix’s bed whenever he’d had a nightmare, even if he accidentally called Felix _Glenn_ far too many times for Felix’s liking.

Felix hardened himself. Distanced himself. He’d already been doing that (to others) since Glenn’s death, but now even more so. The few letters he received from Dimi—_the boar_ were all tossed into a fireplace.

The futile attempts at avoiding came to a pause when both he and the boar enrolled at the Officers Academy and were even assigned dorm rooms right beside each other. Then came the irritation of watching the ghost of his friend walking around and smiling an empty smile that their professor and others seemed so taken with.

Felix hated every moment, or at least that was what he pretended. And yet, he also trained with the boar, even sunk low enough to engage in empty reminiscence when the odd nostalgia struck. It did nothing to alleviate Felix’s grief over him – like Glenn, Dimitri was a wound on him that might not heal and one that Felix inadvertently kept reopening over and over again.

When the boar looked at him, sometimes he didn’t see Felix, but the ghost of Glenn, and the soft blue eyes dimmed and all life seemed to leave them.

More than anything, Felix hated being his brother’s ghost. Hated knowing that Dimitri back then had never truly accepted that the dead were_ dead_.

Likewise, the boar was but a ghost of Dimitri, so perhaps they were even in that regard. Both tormenting each other with their existences.

*

Remire village and the Flame Emperor’s identity truly pushed him over the edge, along with their professor’s disappearance.

It was like watching the events from two years back all over again.

Felix didn’t believe death was any good as salvation – but, Goddess help him, perhaps it would have been better if Dimitri had died completely in Duscur.

At the very least Felix wouldn’t be forced to watch him fall apart time and time again.

*

He searched for him with Sylvain for those five years. Partly because of his father, partly because of duty, and partly because Felix knew that he shouldn’t be left alone if he were still alive. The boar had always had the tendency to wallow, and Felix wouldn’t let him if he got his hands on him.

But a part of him doubted whether the man was alive – as suspicious as the secrecy regarding Dimitri’s unshown body was, Felix could not imagine a scenario where Dimitri had gotten away from Cornelia and the executioners.

He doubted Dimitri had even had enough life in him to bother trying to escape.

Three years after the fall of Garreg Mach, Felix voiced his thoughts to Sylvain. In a rather brusque manner, because he was who he was, and he was fed up fighting bandits of other territories when he should have been back home helping his father do the same.

“I’m ready to turn around if you are,” Sylvain had told him with a disgustingly knowing look on his face.

The damned fool knew Felix far too well.

Felix never brought the topic up again.

*

Felix had accepted he was dead, despite the continuing search. He was even relieved, as monstrous as that was. Death was no salvation, but Dimitri had been dead long enough already. The job had merely been finished after years of tortuous half-life.

Felix could be at peace with that.

He _could_.

If there had been ever hope in him for Dimitri, that hope was just as diminished as Dimitri himself.

And yet… he couldn’t turn around and return to Fraldarius territory. Not for long, anyhow.

*

Yet, as it just so happened, the boar was at the monastery when he and Sylvain had made their way there. Though, at first, Felix hadn’t even realized who the man was at their professor’s side – not until the boar had opened his mouth and told them it’d have been better had they not come, or something of the like.

His voice aside – rough, clearly unused over the past weeks and months – the boar looked like he’d been through hell, come back, and then returned to hell again only to come back more wounded than the first time. With hair so tousled and dirty that it looked like it hadn’t seen a brush or a wash in months and only one bloodshot eye, recognizing Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd was a task that took several moments to accomplish.

“It’s like he’s a completely different person,” Felix lamented later, and there was no masking away the fear that clawed him from the inside. “What the hell happened to him?”

No one that was around to hear the question had any answers to offer him, not even the professor that had seemed to have the boar open up to them a little bit during the Academy year.

He was alive, against Felix’s expectations.

But wouldn’t it have been better if he had died?

*

It took a few days until Felix realized that he had seen this Dimitri before, a long time ago. The realization came to him as he watched the boar in the cathedral, standing as far away from the man as possible without losing sight of his wide back and hunched posture.

The vacant look he had given Felix when he had approached him before… it was as though it was straight from nine years ago, on one of Felix’s (and his father’s) visits to Fhirdiad. Felix didn’t remember if Dimitri screaming at the sight of him had happened on the same trip, or an earlier one. It didn’t matter either way.

One particular day had been exceptionally bad, and Felix could only really recall the look on Dimitri’s face – it had scared him to his core, to the point where nine years later the image of it came to his mind easily. A pair of empty eyes that stared off into nothingness, as if their owner no longer saw or recognized anything. As if Dimitri was a prisoner in his own body, unable to will himself to do the simplest task.

The vacant, dead look was the same on this older walking corpse’s face.

It sickened Felix.

The memories were bitter, and ones he had never wanted to relive.

*

“Hey. I have a request regarding… that creature.”


End file.
